First was an online assessment and a recruiter call, followed by a 45-minute technical phone screen. The virtual onsite loop is usually five rounds: three coding, one system design, and the Googleyness behavioral chat.

The coding rounds are done entirely in a shared editor with no autocomplete and absolutely no way to run your code, meaning you have to dry-run everything yourself within the strict 45-minute window. The real filter isn't just getting an initial working solution; they heavily grade your general cognitive ability based on how you handle follow-ups. They will take a standard problem like a static BST or counting islands in a graph and suddenly add continuous insertions or shift it to a merge-by-one-flip scenario just to see how your thinking adapts.

Sys design heavily evaluates your Role Related Knowledge (RRK), and at senior levels, they expect you to independently identify the bottleneck constraints before the interviewer even has to point them out. The Googleyness round mostly digs into navigating ambiguity and tough team dynamics.

For prep, don't just memorize optimal solutions; understand the patterns and practice a lot. I practiced through LC, of course, but also had a mock on Prepfully with a Google SWE beforehand, and it saved me when it came to handling those unexpected constraint changes in real-time. Also, it is worth checking Reddit and Blind to understand the loops better, but I hope this helps a bit.

Design Google Maps' traffic estimation and routing system.